What Is Image SEO? How Is It Done?

Image SEO means when a website targets to achieve higher SEO ranking and visitor experience through enhanced indexability, and quality presented images on the website. Search engines evaluate the images you have displaying on your website as they evaluate your text-based content. Based on how SEO-friendly your images are, the better SEO results in terms of web and image search you have.

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 As your content should be related to your website’s idea, the images that are attached to your site should also be related. If the visuality usage performed by your website doesn’t match with SEO’s expectations, you will get a lower SEO ranking as if you fall from a cliff. As Screpy experts, we think we should inform you that your images have to be associated with your content according to search engines so that the SEOs can make sense out of them. So, what does that mean? That means if you attach a duck picture while describing a dog, SEO’s considerations about your website inevitably will be negative, which ends up getting deeper and deeper.

What Is Image SEO
What Is Image SEO

However, achieving image SEO optimization is not something like trying to scratch your ear with your elbow. There are some tips and tactics. Therefore, today we will talk about why image SEO is important and how SEO ımage can be done based on our Screpy expertise.

Why Is Image SEO Important?

Visuality has the capability of attracting people’s attention in the blink of an eye, which places them in such a vital location for any kind of business. The reason for that is the human brain tends to retain images for more durations than text-based content (except slogans). Besides, comparing to any other sources, images are easier to swallow and absorb by individuals. Contents empowered with images make your users more involved in what is offered to them. Therefore, images should be a part of every content to be displayed in the highest quality. That is exactly where the importance of SEO comes in since optimized and SEO-friendly images will strengthen your website presence in many ways.

Why Is Image SEO Important?
Why Is Image SEO Important?

1-More SEO-friendly images your website has, the more positive user feedback you get:

Websites with SEO-friendly images as visual content are among the sites that internet users are most satisfied with. SEO-optimized visuality is important as it will have a very positive impact on your bounce rate.

2-SEO-friendly images will allow you to be on the higher list of image searches:

Image search tools like the Google Image Search engine are now used daily by almost everyone. For this reason, the use of images that appeal to SEO will increase your image ranking in search engines over time.

3-SEO-optimized images will reduce load time:

Optimized and readjusted images will directly affect the loading speed of your website. The more optimized and SEO-friendly the images attached to your website, the faster the loading speed. What about the result? The result will be higher SEO rankings. Remember. Website loading speed is a critical criterion according to SEO.

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How To Achieve Image SEO

When image SEO is done, you can optimize your website for any internet user while gaining the top SEO ranking. As Screpy experts, we will provide you some tips that you can follow to achieve image SEO.

How to achieve image SEO?
How to achieve image SEO?

Let Your Website Include Images

First of all, your website needs to involve images to achieve image SEO. Adding a graphical design or visuality based on your pages is spotted by search engines. And search engines arrange their search rankings according to the spot. Your content becomes valuable and worthy to be displayed on the first page when a search occurs.

Besides, images are always attractive and impulsive for any kind of user. They constitute the majority of considered-to-be-high-quality-content websites. This is because images are easy to consume and understand. On top of that, they can empower any message intended to be given or sold when they are attached to any corner of a text/ content. Through images, your customers can understand what you offer to them better while retaining it more intensely.

Determining The Most Relevant Image

Apart from the fact that the images you add attract the user’s attention, they must be relevant to your content to be useful in terms of SEO. This is one of the most important factors positively influencing SEO value. The more relevant the image attached to your topic/ content, the higher your website’s SEO value. Therefore, the images and illustrations you use should be as relevant to the title as possible and reflect the content.

In addition, we recommend that you should avoid adding visual attachments from stock images as much as possible while deciding on images. Using original images will add plus points to your originality. Remember, using common images might hurt your originality, while images you own will increase your prestige in the eyes of internet users.

 Determining The Most Suitable Format

Images have different types of formats, and each format has its different and unique specialties. The most common and known-by-everyone image formats are PNGs and JPEGs. But, what is the difference between them?

 Imagine two different stars. While the first one is more large, dense, and shiny, our second star is a bit tinier, light and emits its light in pixels. For our demonstration, the first sun is the PNG format, and the second start corresponds to the JPEG format. PNG offers a high-quality image while being clear as crystal. However, it also requires larger spaces to fit in, which means it takes a bit more to load it. JPGs, on the other hand, offer a low-middle-level image quality but a smaller file size.

Another type of format we would like to add another type of format based on our Screpy expertise is GIFs. They have become part of our daily life in recent years, especially through social media platforms. It is because, in addition to normal images, Google Image Search can now detect GIFs. As long as they are displayed related to your content correctly, they will engage more people and increase your SEO ranking.

Which one is the best? Well, it depends. However, in our opinion, PNGs are the best to use. They are always able to be rendered with higher resolution, which allows you to resize it without losing quality. When it comes to GIFs, they should be well-planned, well-organized, and optimized. GIFs are more like a go-hard or go-home situation.

Determining The Right File Name

Google can detect images for SEO ranking, but of course, it can’t understand what’s in the content of the image like we humans. For this reason, you should help search engines understand what the image you are sharing is about. You should remember that, in fact, the person you are helping is yourself and your website. This is because you will gain high SEO rankings by not misleading the search engines.

Choosing the right file name requires only a bit of attention and reasoning. Let’s say, if the content of the image is about Leonardo Da Vinci, you should name the file something like Da Vinci or straight Leonardo Da Vinci. Naming it otherwise something like “Image101.png” would not harm your SEO ranking but not be helpful to increase it either.

Use Keywords While Naming

When your images include titles with keywords, they become more SEO-friendly. Because when you define the image with keywords, you will make a great contribution to the search engines’ understanding of what you are sharing.

Compressed Images

Compressing your photos to reduce their size is another small but effective tactic that will add plus points to your image SEO. When visuality is included in any web content, it makes up almost a quarter of its size. And such high storage may lead decrease in the upload speed. But what does decreased load speed mean? It means you will have lower SEO rankings. Besides, it is not something that will cost you a fortune or take your whole time. To compress your images, you can use any photoshop software as well as free internet tools such as JPEG Optimizer or Kraken.

Compressed Images
Compressed Images

As Screpy experts, we would like to remind you again that compressed images turn out to provide an improved load speed for your visitors. And high load speed provides you with being a top member of SEO ranking.

Browser Caching For Your Images

Using browser caching, caching visual content such as the same logos/graphics on pages is another method that will positively affect your SEO ranking. Although it seems like a small and ineffective method, it is a very effective tactic as it will directly impact the loading speed.

Give A Chance For Image-Structured Data

Structured data is also defined as schema markup. Thanks to structured data techniques, search engines embrace the image you display as a more intense-informational image through added back-end details. In addition, the images you share are perceived as “rich images” by SERPs. But you should not forget that there are two properties that your image must have: being crawlable and indexable.

XML Site Map

Thanks to the images containing XML sitemap, search engines will be more aware of your website’s existence. That way, you tell Google, “Hey, my website involves images,” and you enable Google to index and crawl the images you have.

Image CDNs

CDNs can also provide speed optimization for images. In this way, you can display the images on your website to your users in the fastest way possible, thanks to optimization and device detection. An image CDN will contribute to your SEO ranking in many ways, such as reducing image payload, delivering your images in the most suitable way for each device. While doing these, images are delivered to your users.

As Screpy experts, now we will be covering frequently asked questions about image SEO.

FAQ

What Is Image SEO?

Image SEO is the process of achieving higher SEO rankings by optimizing and relocating your website’s images. Optimized images are graphic files with reduced sizes while offering the same quality with larger sizes. 

Is Image SEO Important?

Of course, it is! If you are running a business, depending on the internet, such as blogging or e-commerce, you will need image SEO and image optimization to acquire better rankings. Besides, it doesn’t only influence your position among SEO ranking positively, but also it comes with a quicker loading feature and more satisfying user experience.

How Can I Optimize An Image Without Losing Quality?

One way to do so is you can search for free-to-use and non-licensed images with high resolution. While doing this, you should continue keeping image/content relations consistently. And lastly, you should test the images displayed on your website repeatedly to see if there is a problem through proper web analytics tools.

Does Image SEO Increase My Sales?

Yes, it does eventually and inevitably. Image SEO provides you three aspects of a big company: quality, enhanced customer engagement, and credibility. Image SEO opens a window for your business to let increased organic traffic and longer-time-on-page duration get inside. 

Conclusion

Using SEO-friendly images is one of the lifebloods of a website’s longevity. Besides being that important, Image SEO and image optimization have many advantages for your website. It improves the loading speed and paves the way for an improved user experience. As a result, your website earns its positions on the top mountain of SEO ranking.  However, the advantages of image SEO are not limited to these because its main effectiveness lies in the results of the advantages it brings. Your annual revenue increases thanks to the internet traffic whose each root of which is linked to your website. Image SEO in a nutshell? Readjust the resolution of images and associate them with appropriate content without affecting their quality. And your website is good to go!

Image SEO is an effective way for every company to be placed higher in SEO rankings while offering quality.

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